


Should Glory Come

by KayGryph



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Danarius/Fenris - Freeform, Dragon Age AU, M/M, Married Dorian, Master/Slave Non-Con, Multi, Seheron
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-24 18:38:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4930786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayGryph/pseuds/KayGryph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian Pavus put on a show, married the girl, and kept everything unsavory private and locked away. He told himself he could learn to accept the life he'd had forced on him...but no one can lie to themselves forever. Afraid of what he would become when it finally broke him, Dorian fled his father, his wife, his children--fled to the war in Seheron, where he hoped to meet a quick end. But when he's captured alive by an agent of the Ben-Hassrath, everything changes... (AU Dorian/Iron Bull. Eventual smut.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Should Glory Come

_"Should glory come at such a price?_  
_What reward can be worth this? If mortals_  
_Were meant to stand among the gods,_  
_Would the gods not open their gates to us?_  
_Rather than demand we build a tower,_  
_Blood, bone, and metal, to the heavens?"_

_-Silence 2:3_

 

The snarl of Qunari cannon fire tore through the jungle, shattering the fragile grey dawn. Over the _BOOOM-crraaack_ of the _gaatlok_ , none of his retinue heard the choice profanities roll fluently from Dorian’s tongue as the brindle mare screamed and reared under him.

“Whoaah!” Dorian seized the reins with both hands and somehow wrested the panicked beast under control. The mare chafed and balked and tossed her head in nervous defiance, but she did not bolt or throw him. His lieutenants were not so successful in their efforts. Dorian watched in overt disgust as Artemius and Hectus went down with a splash into the mud. He didn’t know which were more useless--the animals or his officers. What good did a mount _do_ him if it attempted to unseat him at every errant spell or crackle of blackpowder?

He’d been told Qunari couriers blinded their Rivaini _asaarash_ with curious armored hoods. Now that Dorian had seen the swampland the oxmen meant to tame--its stinking green expanse rife with an exotic selection of poisonous flora and carnivorous fauna--he understood. Only a horse trained to trust unreservedly would bear a rider _willingly_ into such a quagmire. The Imperial Warmblood had been bred for war on the plains and under the broadleaf forests of southern Thedas, not in the humid, hilly jungles of Seheron.

_Why by the name of Andraste’s holy smallclothes does the Imperium want this fucking island?_ Dorian swept his dark mop of sweat-damp hair out of his eyes and cast in the direction of the Qunari salvo. The cannons had sounded from the west, where the sluggish green waters of the Elesian River cut its wide track through the lush growth of vine-choked vegetation. Well. _That_ wasn’t good. Cannons on the river meant the Qunari reinforcements had arrived--three days _earlier_ than Dorian’s intelligence had suggested. Lying savages… He made a mental note to kill the next loinclothed native who so much as looked at him cross-eyed.

“Master Pavus? If you’re quite satisfied with yourself, perhaps you might attend the situation at hand?”

Dorian wheeled his courser toward the voice and squinted peevishly at his mean-faced and muddy apprentice. The son of a Laetan quaestor should praise his divine stars to have a mentor of Dorian’s connections and talents, but Dorian suspected Artemius had never been inspired to gratitude for anything. He had skill enough, or else Dorian would never have taken him on at all, but he suffered the wit of an Ander and the courtesy of an Antivan.

“What situation might that be?” Dorian drawled. Artemius flung an arm (and several clumps of mud) toward the rear of the train, where Dorian saw an elf slave stood doubled over and puffing. He snorted a laugh. “Here I’d begun to think we might at _least_ get through breakfast before the day’s first calamity. How utterly naive of me…” Dorian put his heels into the mare’s flank and judiciously skirted eye contact with either Ser Hectus or the pagegirl with the face full of pimples laboring to haul the corpulent man from the mud.

“Well?” Dorian arched one scrupulously plucked eyebrow as the slave girl gulped mouthfuls of air. “Don’t stand there gasping at me like a dumb fish! Report!”

“O-Orders, my lord…from Magister Danarius.” The slave brandished a roll of parchment sealed with a glyph that shimmered faintly in the grey light. Dorian took the missive and broke the magical seal with a muttered word. Words in Ancient Tevene appeared in a hastily scrawled hand: _Eastern bank under siege. Qunari riverships armed with gaatlok. Advance immediately to the river._

“ _Kaffas_ ,” Dorian swore and incinerated the parchment with a flick of his hand that lit tongues of bluish flame in his palm. The mare whickered and danced nervously beneath him from hoof to hoof. “Can’t Danarius hold even _one_ outpost without squawking that his eyebrows have caught fire? Does he realize what that ghastly blackpowder does to my skin? Not to mention my _clothes_ …”

“The Magister said you were to respond…with _all haste_ , my lord,” the slave managed, wheezing.

“Yes, that I’m sure he did,” Dorian laughed humorlessly and his eyes slid to where Ser Hectus and the rest of them had dragged themselves up off the ground. “Come! Shall we ride gallantly to the Magister’s aid? I daresay we may at least be assured a dramatic entrance…”

The thunder of the cannons crescendoed to a deafening pitch as they neared the battle. The mood was black. Dorian knew the rest of them had likely reached the same thought he had. When they reached the river, they would have to leave the safety of the treeline and charge exposed down the rocky incline. If the Qunari ships had their cannons trained on the shore, they’d be dead before they reached the water. Dorian felt his bowels clench and the blood begin to pound in his ears. They could hear the screams now--Qunari and Tevinter both. The grim procession through the sweltering heat of full dawn only heightened the sensation that he was going to vomit his breakfast into his lap--if only he’d _had_ breakfast.

_No civilized place would require a man to die before he’s had a proper meal._ Dorian reclined in the saddle and cast an eye over at his lieutenant, who looked positively miserable in the heavy plate regalia of the Imperial Templars. “Hectus, how do you suppose the oxmen copulate? Do they rut like cattle in the fields, or have they at least the decorum to find a bed?”

Hectus looked irritated by the question. “Qunari don’t take women to wife or raise children. Their priests decide who gets to breed, and the rest of them fuck the priests when they’ve the need.”

Dorian blinked. “Truly? _Fascinating_. Maybe the Imperium could learn something from these heathens after all. Weekly convocation _would_ be rather more sufferable with the promise of coitus. Hnnm… On second contemplation, forget I suggested it. The Chantry priesthood are a hideous lot, aren’t they?”

Dorian pretended not to see the revulsion in the way the templar looked at him, but he could not swallow the knot of resentment that rose in his gorge. Hectus was a peon of the Chantry. A _Soporati_. What would he ever know of what it meant to be bred like a pedigree stallion?

_The scion of House Pavus counts more in common with the Qunari than his own countrymen,_ he mused bitterly. _Wouldn’t Father be proud…_

When they crested the overlook, Dorian’s heart dropped into his stomach. The fortress on the far cliffs that they’d liberated from the Fog Warriors not two days before lay a smoking ruin. Its defenders weren’t _all_ dead. Not yet, at any rate. Violent flares of magical energy exploded in shivering arcs of light every few seconds from the bowels of the Tevinter stronghold, throwing the crumbling stone battlements into garish relief. Through the shifting haze that settled over the valley, he could make out the razor silhouettes of Qunari dreadnoughts on the river--wolves in the water.

“Sweet Maker,” he heard Hectus utter behind him. Dorian looked over his shoulder at Hectus and the rest of them--the pimply templar pagegirl not a month out of her initiation, Artemius in his mud-spattered apprentice robes ostentatiously stitched with the colors of the Minrathous Circle, the plebeian soldiers with their dumb calflike stares, and the elf slave whose knees shook at the sight below them.

“Shoulders squared! Heads high! Banners aloft!” Dorian commanded with inappropriate cheer. He grinned. “Remember, one day they’ll write songs about us--immortalize our stunning profiles in marble, perhaps. Not _yours_ , of course, Hectus.”

His last thought before the battlelust took him was that he would’ve taken care to wear something flashier if he’d known he’d be dying today. His corpse would have been perfection delivered to his father in tailored Vyrantium samite or an understated black and gold brocade.

Ah well.

“ _CHARGE!_ ”

Dorian dug in his heels, and the mare shot forward like a bolt loosed from a crossbow--out from the trees, down the incline, sand and mud flying from her hooves. Ser Hectus fell quickly behind and out of view, but the templar pagegirl on her leggy rounsey outstripped them all. Her sword flashed in her raised fist like a thing out of legend, steel golden and aglow in the hazy Seheron sun, before a Qunari arrow took her in the throat and she went down in a red shower of blood. The enemy on the shore had wheeled to face them with bows and pikes to skewer them as they charged. Dorian raised his naked face to the smoke-torn sky and opened himself to the Veil.

Pride shone fullbright in his eyes. This would be the best part of dying.

Magic hummed alive and electric in his blood, rising with him and through him like breath through flame. Dorian outstretched his hand, and a wall of fire engulfed the Qunari barricades in its ravenous path. What imagery they would pen in their songs--how the scion of House Pavus, golden as the sun of blessed Andraste herself, bathed the enemies of Tevinter in righteous flame.

His flair for the dramatic was the one thing he’d inherited from his father that he had never learned afterward to resent.

The earth boiled and cracked under the inferno, rose in fractured pillars around the barricades. The Qunari who had not been consumed fled into the water to escape the flames. Magefire in the Qunari tongue was called _saarvat_ \-- _dangerous fire_ \--as though magic was any more _dangerous_ than the fire they unleashed from their blackpowder cannons. The weapons of war were many, but their purpose was the same. Dorian would not pretend he did not feel a swell of satisfaction to watch the oxmen scream as they ran from his magics. A flick of his wrist drew spirits of horror and death across the Veil to hound the few survivors to their deaths in the rapid river current.

They were across the beach, charging hard on the riven barricades. Dorian hunched over the mare’s bowed neck and braced himself. She reached the barricade and leaped, vaulting clear of the broken earth and onto the Qunari rivership’s gangplank. Two, three paces and they were on the deck. Dorian’s cloak flew out behind him, and he pulled his staff free from his back as his horse’s hooves scrabbled on the wooden planks. The Qunari left on deck--elven and human converts, most of them--had their mouths agape.

“I don’t like to be a stick a mud,” Dorian said, “but I’d rather you _didn’t_ reduce our outpost to a heap of smoking rubble. I’m not sleeping on the ground in _these_ clothes.”

The two nearest to him shouted a Qunari phrase Dorian didn’t catch and came at him with two-handed sabers. They were quite evidently not fighters. Dorian almost felt remorse as he boiled the poor bastards alive in their own skins. Almost. It was hard to feel bad for creatures who would’ve had him chained and his mouth sewn shut after cutting out his tongue.

Ser Hectus and a few of his templars had made it onto the deck alongside him, and they cut through the Qunari with ease. They had nearly reached the stairs that led belowdecks, where the cannons were housed, when suddenly Dorian noticed the elf slave who’d brought him Danarius’ message. She’d somehow survived the foray and broken through the Qunari attackers to climb onto the mast. Dorian frowned. _What in the world…?_

Too late, Dorian saw the barrels of _gaatlok_ clustered around the mast, the lit torch in the elf girl’s hand. With a roar like a dragon’s breath, the explosive shattered outward in a blaze of white light. Dorian threw up an arm to shield his eyes and felt the horse disappear from under him as he was lifted bodily out of the saddle. Time seemed to stand still, and after an impossible length of time, Dorian landed hard and smashed his forehead into the ground. Stars erupted behind his eyes, and the world blurred and greyed around him.

_No...no, not like this._ Dorian clawed his way back from the edge of consciousness and forced himself to roll onto his back. He gasped in a lungful of smoke and coughed until he shook from the stabbing pain in his ribcage. His head swam, the clamor of battle around him muffled through the high-pitched hum ringing in his ears. The taste of blood was in his mouth. Dorian groped blindly for his staff but found only the hilt of a Qunari broadsword. As the haze cleared from his vision, he saw he lay on the half-collapsed deck of the Qunari rivership amongst the wreckage of several crates and the bodies of Hectus and his lieutenants. A footlong splinter from the mast was buried in his left shoulder, and blood spread in a dark stain over his coat of mail. Feet away lay the mare, screaming, her foreleg shattered at the fetlock.

_Vishante kaffas._ Dorian hauled himself upright, one arm curled stiffly around his midsection, where the pain was worst. Every hitched breath he drew sent a knifelike stab of pain through his right side. The flasks he'd carried--healing and lyrium potions--lay smashed in broken glass shards around him. With his good hand, he pulled the splinter from his shoulder and sent a fresh gush of blood over his armor. Probably not what a healer would have recommended, but he needed both his arms to fight. Hand clenched white-knuckled around the sword’s hilt, he staggered to the mare and plunged the broadsword into the animal’s heart. She spasmed, heaved her final breath, and died.

Dorian shoved a fist through his damp mess of dark hair, leaving a savage red streak of blood across his forehead. He barely had time to throw a barrier in front of him before the Qunari were on him. The first attack glanced harmlessly aside, but with the second, the barrier wavered and weakened. One monstrous hulk of a man came at him with a greataxe and bellowed a guttural warcry.

“ _KATARA, SAAREBAS!_ ”

Dorian drew himself to his full height, and dark eyes glinted dangerously through the smoke. His staff was nowhere in sight. No matter. He did not _need_ a staff. Dorian reached for the Veil and felt the Fade bend to his will. Glyphs of magic glowed in Dorian’s hands and over the ground at his feet. He reveled in the power that flooded his veins like a drunkenness, and his handsome mouth twisted into a cruel line as two of the Qunari soldiers shrieked and convulsed before exploding in a devastating spray of gore and blood.

The Qunari with the axe bellowed and charged, horns lowered. Dorian whirled, hands a blur of motion as he worked the aura around him into a frenzy of color and sound. A dagger from his belt found its way into his hand, and his palm opened with a red flash of pain. The demon came howling through the Veil, skeletal and monstrous and fanged. The Qunari’s inhuman screams as the ravenous thing devoured him seemed to go on long after he was dead and the demon was cast back to the Fade.

Dorian stumbled away from the carnage, fighting the exhaustion that threatened to overtake him. The deck lurched suddenly and sent him crashing to his knees. Dorian swore. Of _course_ the blast had put a hole through the ship’s hull. No time left for fooling around, then. He braced himself against an overturned crate and summoned his last reserves of strength.

The world distorted dizzyingly as though somehow stretched thin, until an instant later everything came abruptly back into focus. Dorian was on his knees, not on the deck of a sinking rivership, but inside the broken walls of the Tevinter fortress. Soldiers and mages crowded the room, apparent survivors of the attack on the fortress. A mage in apprentice robes ( _not_ Artemius) stood over him, saying something, but his words were lost in the deafening explosion behind them. Dorian turned to watch the Qunari ship go up in a cloud of fire and smoke, wooden splinters and shards of metal flying in all directions.

“To think,” said Dorian between ragged breaths, “that might have been _me_ …”

“Out of the way. _Move_.” Dorian looked up to see a white-haired elf slave dressed in full battle armor, greatsword sheathed over his shoulder. The throng of mages parted before him, a sight startling in its own right even before Dorian saw the strange tattooed markings on the elf’s face and arms. He’d heard tales about the elf barbarians of the south who tattooed their faces, but these were…different.

_Danarius truly achieved what Alexius spoke of, then._ Dorian’s eyes traced the pale markings over the elf’s body with fascination. _He’s found a way to brand lyrium unto flesh. Incredible…_

“Danarius,” said Dorian when the magister appeared. “Alive, are you?”

“Evidently,” replied Danarius in an impatient drawl. The magister was an older man in his late fifties or even sixties, not the sort of mage one found often on the battlegrounds of Seheron, but political ambition had driven men to fouler places than war. In any event, Magister Danarius did not appear to have seen battle at all; his silk-brocade robes were immaculate, albeit appallingly last-season. “I’m glad to see that you survive as well, despite your lateness to the battle. Fenris, do help young Lord Pavus to his feet.”

Dorian let the tattooed elf help him to stand. “Lateness? Next time I will endeavor to drive off the Qunari hordes from your doorstep more punctually. Is the fortress secure, then? How many--aaaghhhh, _kaffas _…__ ” He sucked in a sharp gasp and shook on his feet as the pain in his side redoubled. The elf grabbed hold of his elbow to steady him, and Dorian felt the hairs along his arm rise on end the way they did when he ingested lyrium. Dorian recoiled as though he’d been burned and threw the slave a cutting look. The elf met his eyes, and for a split second, Dorian thought he saw a flicker of an emotion alarmingly like _pride_  behind the blankly obedient stare, but no sooner had he indulged the thought than the elf dropped his gaze submissively.

“Forgive me, Lord Pavus,” he muttered. “I meant no offense.”

“Of course you didn’t, my little wolf,” Danarius reassured the slave, though his eyes never left Dorian’s face. “Don’t trouble yourself, Pavus. If I wanted you dead, you would know. The way you throw yourself at the Qunari, it would be far easier for me to let the oxmen make an end of you.” The magister laughed. “Their ranks fell in retreat after your… _display_ with the rivership. I suggest you have a healer see to your wounds and recover yourself. At sundown, we withdraw to the fortress at Vol Tuscia.”

“Artemius?” Dorian inquired. “Have you seen him since the battle?”

“It’s no affair of mine, Pavus, if you cannot keep track of your own apprentice.” Danarius turned, his prized slave in stride behind him. For the briefest moment, Dorian entertained the idea that he might summon one of the demons whose names he’d read in the _Augurium Malum_  to murder Danarius. He might even manage the deed, if he took the magister sufficiently by surprise. The spell was a simple one--simple, at any rate, for a mage of Dorian’s preeminent talents. It might be worth the price the demon exacted to see the expression of terror on Danarius’ face when he died.

Dorian blanched as a lance of pain shot through the open wound in his shoulder. He glanced down, suddenly lightheaded, and saw the bright red stain had seeped from his shoulder down to his waist. Blinking dazedly through the smoke, Dorian caught a glint of gold at a dark throat. Relief washed through him when the man turned and Dorian saw his face--relief, and self-hate.

“Belus,” called Dorian faintly. “...lend me a hand, would you?” The slave ran to brace Dorian under his good arm and guided him onto a chaise against the room’s one standing wall. When he leaned back onto the cushions, pain radiated through his right side and shoulder. Dorian screwed his eyes tight against the sudden nausea. A light sheen of sweat had broken out over his smooth dark skin that had nothing to do with the stifling jungle heat. “I-I…can’t breathe. Take this damned coat off me, please.”

Belus eased him out of his bloodsoaked mail and the tunic beneath, clever hands working the clasps and buckles effortlessly. He left, but returned a minute later with a healer, along with a fresh herbal poultice and bandages. Gingerly, Belus dabbed the blood from the deep wound in Dorian’s shoulder and clucked his tongue in soft reassurance when he heard Dorian choke back a moan of pain.

Dorian grimaced. “You do fret like a mother hen…” Belus smiled but did not speak. Dorian was not certain that he _could_  speak. Suddenly, Dorian remembered what had happened on the rivership--the elf slave who betrayed them, who _killed_ Hectus. Had it been an act of opportunity, or had the elf been spying on them all along? How many other slaves might be agents of the Qunari? Unconsciously, Dorian stiffened under Belus’ gentle hands, and the slave noticed and began to pull away.

“Belus,” Dorian murmured. His hand caught the slave’s elbow, not ungently, and caressed the warm bronzed skin. Dorian’s eyes flicked toward the healer, but the man had turned away to prepare the poultice. “…wait for me in my room.” Belus did not argue, merely bobbed his head and smiled. Dorian felt a familiar knot of shame twist in his chest…but he had long ago learned to ignore _that_. He was hardly the only Altus who kept a bedwarmer among the slaves they’d brought to war. If what he’d heard about Danarius’ pet elf were true, the slave was more to the magister than a mere bodyguard. _Little wolf_ , he’d heard the magister call his bodyguard, but he did not seem a wolf to Dorian; wolves were not tamed and kept on leashes.

When the healer had bandaged and bound his wounds and given him a healing draught, Dorian knew it was his duty to learn if his apprentice survived. His feet, however, had different notions, and they carried him not to the courtyard and the makeshift infirmary but to the private room set against the western ramparts where he’d made his quarters.

Belus waited in his bed, naked. He watched Dorian undress himself, quiet eyes tracing the familiar lines of his master’s body. He was so beautiful--Rivaini, Dorian thought. He had never asked. Thin chest dark with fine curly hair, hips narrow and sculpted above the curve of his buttocks. Dorian took his pleasure quickly and unsentimentally. It would have made the shame easier to bear if he could pretend Belus held any love for him, that the gentleness in his touch and the want in his eyes meant anything more than a slave obeying his master’s orders. But Dorian would never let himself forget exactly what Belus was…or what _he_ was.

When he had finished, Belus lay flushed and trembling beneath him, his erection hard against Dorian’s stomach. Dorian slid wetly out of him and let the slave finish himself. Belus hardly made a sound even when he shot his seed into his palm and his lust-dark eyes fluttered closed, cheek faintly pink and warm against Dorian’s shoulder. A naive voice in Dorian wanted to let Belus doze a while, tucked in the crook of his arm, but slaves--even bed slaves--did not sleep beside their masters.

“Go.”

And Belus went.

Dorian tried to sleep, but found he couldn’t. Magic healed all but the deepest wounds, but his bruised body had needed rest, not sex, for its recovery. Another quick healing draught would ease the soreness, but he chose instead to suffer the pain and lay awake by the light of the taper Belus had left on his desk.

He remembered the day he bought Belus from the slaver’s block. They’d been riding home to Qarinus from the capital after his father’s ceremonial appointment as Magister Princeps of the Imperium. Magister Halward had labored fifty years in pursuit of the honor. He was a man who, late in his life, had achieved everything he’d ever wanted: station, wealth, influence…and a pious son to secure his legacy.

Livia had been heavily pregnant with Arexis when they passed through the coastal city of Carastes, and at the height of her intolerable humor. Dorian was to blame for her swollen ankles and her sore back. Dorian had willed the carriage horse to lame its leg and delay their journey. It would be Dorian’s fault if she went into labor before they reached Qarinus and gave birth to his son on the side of the road like a peasant woman. Couldn’t Dorian at least make himself useful and buy her a fresh horse for their carriage, before she fainted from the wretched odor of the sea?

So Dorian had fled into the wending side-streets and alleyways of Carastes, desperate for respite even if only for an hour, half an hour. He had wandered, aimless, past vendors of Antivan brandies and Orlesian textiles, past the street _vulgati_  illicitly peddling their carven animal jawbones and crystal talismans. He stopped near a stall where an old woman with a coarse Perivantine accent hawked bracelets inlaid with serpentstone and lazurite and veridium. He could buy every luxury for sale in the narrow street market, every gold earring, every tapestry and ornament. He could commission a tailored doublet of cloth-of-gold, exactly like the several he already owned, or commission an artist to do a portrait of himself to hang in the Pavus estate. He could buy a new horse, twenty new horses, to replace the one who’d taken lame, and if he decided he wished Livia to suffer the stink of the sea every year, he could even buy himself and his wife a summer estate on the waterfront.

Yet among the troves of priceless relics and baubles, nowhere for sale was the one thing he truly needed.

At the docks, the slaves off the latest ship from Dairsmuid stood meekly atop a scaffold as the crowd shouted their bids. When Dorian laid eyes on Belus, he thought he had slipped into a memory. Skin tan like fine whiskey, cheekbones shaded, lips that curled when he smiled. The name came to him unasked for, a bright and burning spark of memory: _Rilienus_. The older boy’s mouth enveloping his own, soft and sweet and perfect. He’d tasted of honey and smelled of lilac oil and cardamom.

It had hurt suddenly to breathe, and for a long and paralyzing instant, he hadn’t. He’d stood in breathless agony, dying on the inside as he looked at the slave and the slave looked at him. The world had gone to grey around him. Dorian felt himself shaking, felt the scream rattling around his head, howling to work up and out of him. Before it reached his throat, Dorian had watched an elderly man draped in the red and black robes of the Imperial Chantry buy the slave for sixty silver. The priest needed an aide to take dictation for his letters, he’d said. A purse of silver worth eight times the slave’s price and the title  _Magister Princeps_ had sufficed to change the old priest’s mind.

He told Livia he needed a slave who had been taught to read and write for his research. If his wife had ever guessed at the truth...well...he was certainly not alone in seeking pleasure outside their marriage. Once, he’d cared enough to keep informed about Livia’s lovers--Gallius Ivernus, Magister Prycis, the templar pageboy Allineas who’d been barely old enough to grow facial hair--but they numbered too many now for him to recall their names.

For Dorian, there had only been Belus. With a slave, at least, there was no risk he might become childishly infatuated. Whatever else might be said about him, after all, Dorian Pavus was a man highly practiced in the art of self-preservation. So well-practiced, in fact, that after three months as a legion commander in Seheron, he had not been able to go through with his clever plan to have himself killed.

_Perhaps if Artemius has died under the incompetence of my command, they will have me court-martialed and executed,_ Dorian mused. He knew it was a folly even to consider the possibility. It was, it so happened, extremely difficult to become accused of any wrongdoing whatsoever when one was the beloved son and heir of the Magister Princeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to anyone who can accurately name all the spells Dorian used in combat. ;)


End file.
